


Channels of Communication

by Nevanna



Series: Redefined Identities and Priorities (Magnusquerade) [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Conflict, M/M, Memory Alteration, Moral Ambiguity, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29045310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Jon's thralls find out that he has been feeding on other humans in secret.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Redefined Identities and Priorities (Magnusquerade) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021207
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26
Collections: The_Magnusquerade





	Channels of Communication

Martin tugged the blanket from the back of the couch and arranged it around himself and Jon. “Don’t know what you’ll think of this one,” he said as the film started. “But it was... formative for me, I guess you could say.”

“That’s how Georgie described it,” Jon recalled. “Formative for herself and her campus theater friends, that is; not for _you,_ obviously. I believe that it was playing at one of their parties, though the volume was very low and conversation was quite loud. Not exactly ideal conditions for immersing oneself in an escapist adventure with elaborate puppets.”

Martin blinked at him, the very picture of innocence, all but batting his eyelashes. “And what do you think of _these_ conditions?”

“More than adequate.” Jon kissed Martin’s hair and turned his eyes to the screen.

He couldn’t hold back a scoff when the heroine crept back into her baby brother’s darkened room to find him missing. “She made a direct appeal to a powerful being from another world, and she certainly seemed to believe that he was listening. What did she _think_ was going to happen?”

Martin shifted against him. “Wait a minute. You’re not going to tell me that goblins are real, too… are you?”

“I’ll let you know if they come up in any statements,” Jon said gravely. “Alongside the vampires and witches and dragons.”

Martin’s head came up again. “ _Dragons?_ ” He nudged Jon’s shoulder with his own. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“You’re smiling,” Jon pointed out. As pleased as he was to see that smile, he couldn’t keep from worrying, in some corner of his mind, that some crisis or unpleasant revelation, or even a resurgence of his own hunger (which was growing more and more difficult to manage), would interrupt their evening.

He snorted a few more times as they kept watching, but his fingers tightened around Martin’s when the Goblin King told Sarah, “I have been generous, but I can be cruel,” and insisted that he was only playing the role of monster because that was what she thought she wanted. Still, Jon managed to keep his tone light when he asked Martin, “So, when you say that _Labyrinth_ was ‘formative,’ I assume that it established your desire for a dangerous supernatural boyfriend?”

“Something like that.” Martin blew a raspberry at him. “So _you_ should consider yourself lucky.”

Jon pulled him close and whispered, “I certainly do,” and no bloodthirsty monsters burst into Martin’s flat. They talked about how lifelike some of the puppets had looked, and about David Bowie’s unapologetic costumes, and about whether the Spiral clan would feel at home in the Labyrinth, and Martin didn’t once fade into another man’s memories. They prepared for bed, and Jon spent a long time listening to Martin’s slow and even breaths, feeling the rhythm of an untroubled heartbeat against the stillness of his own chest, before allowing himself a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. 

\---

Perhaps the events of that day were inevitable, following a certain spidery spool of time. Perhaps, instead, Jon had simply made a mistake in meeting with Jess Tyrell at the institute. It hardly mattered, the end was the same. 

He ushered her into his office, barely glancing at Martin as he called over his shoulder, “Would you show Ms. Tyrell out, once we’re finished?”

Once Jon had closed the door behind them and the tape recorder whirred to life, Jess tried as hard as she could to keep her voice steady as she told her story. She described her job with Thames Water, and the project that had sent her underground. Described her detour into what Jon suspected was the territory of the Buried clan. Described the hand that had groped at her ankle, with just enough contact to immobilize her for hours before a search party finally tracked her down.

Jon tried to follow the narrative, beyond that point, but her remembered panic, despair, and eventual delirium lapped against him like oily water, which didn’t make the rhythm of her blood, pulsing at her wrists and temples and throat, any less enticing. He looked into her memories, and the desperation twined around his own hunger, but he couldn’t see any more than she recalled, in that dark tunnel. One thing was abundantly certain: Jess was very lucky that the unknown vampire hadn’t drained her dry.

“I don’t know if it’ll really help, coming here and talking to you,” she said at last. “Will I be able to get a full night’s sleep, let alone go back to work, if I know what was really down there? Or will that just mean more panic attacks and more bad dreams? Either way, I’ve tried everything else you could possibly imagine.”

Jon remembered to offer a sympathetic nod. When he first took over as Archivist, he might have run through several “logical” and mundane explanations -- that Jess had imagined her assailant; that her paralysis had been a natural reaction to trauma -- but he could no longer summon even the most tenuous facade of skepticism. “If you wish,” he said, “we can try to find records of similar… unusual manifestations in that area, or in the sewer system in general.” When Jess looked up at him, tears were trickling from her eyes, and it didn’t take a mind reader to discern what she _really_ wanted. “Unless,” Jon added, “you would prefer to forget that any of it ever happened.”

Hope stole across her face as she met his eyes. His smile was very sharp.

\---

Jon was sorting through the nearest pile of statements when Melanie pounded on his office door. “Get out here, now!” she shouted.

Martin and Basira were with her. Jon couldn’t smell or sense anyone else in the Archives, and when he opened the door, none of them seemed to be in any immediate distress. “What, may I ask, is so urgent?”

Melanie glared at him. “I was on my way back from lunch,” she began, “and I saw Martin with a visitor. He said she’d just given you a statement, but she was all dreamy-eyed and rubbing her neck. You think I don’t recognize that look from when…” She caught herself. “Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out?”

Only after a long silence did Jon admit, “I knew you probably would.” Which meant that he should have been more prepared for a confrontation like this one. “And that I would have to--”

“Have to what?” Basira demanded. “Make sure we forget?”

“Of course not!” Although it would be easy to smooth away the memories, at least from his own thralls, who already had so much to worry about even without adding himself to the list…

Martin interrupted Jon before those thoughts could leave his own head: “Was she the first?”

“He doesn’t need to answer that,” Basira said flatly, the memory of their recent sea voyage etched clearly upon the surface of her mind. “I already know.”

“How many?” Melanie growled.

Jon sighed out a breath that he didn’t need. “Today was the first… encounter… here at the Institute. And at least I _asked_ if she wanted to hold onto her memories.”

“Oh, is that a new rule?” muttered Basira.

“First time I’ve ever heard someone describe their food as an ‘encounter,’” Melanie sneered.

“Well, if you want to call them food, then maybe you understand that I wasn’t getting nearly enough of it here!” Jon heard his own voice rising. “Not since Tim… left us.” He told them about everything, from a supermarket cleaner who dreamt of an endless warehouse, to cemeteries at dusk and pubs at midnight, to his chance meeting with Floyd Matharu and his demons. “Elias knew,” he finished. “He didn’t try to stop me, but he didn’t offer any alternatives, either.”

“Why would he?” Melanie’s teeth were clenched. “You’re following right in his creepy footsteps.”

“He probably does approve,” Basira said. “That might be why he hasn’t let you snack on _me._ ” She closed one hand around her opposite wrist, and Jon Knew that Elias’s teeth had been there a few hours before. 

He forced back another pang of thirst and asked her, “Would you have wanted that?”

“More than I wanted _this._ ” Her voice had flattened. “At least I’d know what was going on.”

“Like you knew what was going on when Daisy--” Jon began. Basira looked stricken, and Melanie took a step toward her.

“What we’re trying to say,” Martin jumped in, “is that you could have _talked_ to us. I don’t know if you were ashamed or scared or just wanted to feel superior, but even if it was just after that first time, we would’ve listened, and maybe we could have figured out other ways to get you what you need. Instead, you kept on drinking innocent people’s blood and then ripping the memory out of their heads, just like _he’s_ done to everyone who works here, _including_ you.” Basira looked like she wanted to interject again, but then she pressed her lips together deliberately. “And I know we let _that_ happen, too,” Martin went on. “But it’s not like we can do much to stop him.”

“So you’re trying to stop _me,_ instead?” Jon heard his own voice rising. He thought that his eyes might be turning red. _If he could make them understand, remind them of how it felt to need blood so badly..._

“Yeah, we’re trying to stop our _master_ from taking what’s _rightfully his,_ ” Melanie spat. She raised her eyes to his in a clear challenge.

Which Jon might have accepted ( _mine to devour, mine to correct_ ), if Basira hadn’t put a hand on her shoulder, telling her to settle down. “This conversation isn’t over,” Basira told Jon. As she and Melanie walked out of the Archives, she glanced back only once. “Martin, maybe you should give each other some space.”

“I think I can keep my head together.” Martin glanced at Jon. “Unless _someone_ finds me more useful when it’s fallen apart.”

Jon stared at him. “You know that I don’t think anything of the sort.”

“Do I?” Martin shot back. “You weren’t counting on me following your orders, then, when you dragged your next meal into your lair?”

“What? No, I hadn’t realized you were…” Jon reached for Martin’s mind instinctively, to comb gently through the thoughts and memories that might have gotten tangled. He’d been so hungry when Ms. Tyrell arrived that he barely registered Martin’s presence, much less realized that earlier that day, Martin had been reading a statement whose repeated references to Robert Smirke had snuck up on him; that within a few moments, Martin was remembering things that he shouldn’t have…

“Don’t,” Martin said now, his voice brutally sharp. “Sometimes I start to think that you’d _prefer_ having Barnabas around, did you know that? _He_ always listened to his master.”

Jon recoiled, his Sight snapping back from Martin’s mind like a rubber band. “You’re wrong,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “We both remember what happened when I wished for complete obedience from you, even unconsciously.”

“I chose to trust you anyway,” Martin agreed. “I don’t _want_ to regret that. But you thought that treating human beings like they could be used, wiped clean, and tossed aside, was better than trusting us -- trusting me -- in return. You decided there was information that we _shouldn’t_ know, even if it affected us. And _that_ reminded me of questions that I try not to think too hard about, or I’ll lose my mind without any psychic meddling at all.”

“I don’t want _that_ to happen either,” Jon told him. “I… really am sorry.”

“I know you are.” Martin’s smile was sad. “I almost wish I didn’t believe you.”

\---

Jon could see in the dark now, but that made the Institute’s subterranean tunnels only slightly easier to navigate than they’d been during his first investigation. He couldn’t remember whether the door that swung open just ahead of him had been there before.

“A guest! To what do I owe the _pleasure_ of your company?” Helen sing-songed, stepping into his path.

‘“Pleasure’ isn’t exactly the word that I’d use,” Jon replied. “You haven’t been down here the whole time, have you? I would have known.” At least, he _thought_ he would have; the tunnels had an unpredictable effect on some of his abilities.

“Why would I ever stay cooped up here?” Helen rolled her eyes. “I just had to find a way through someone who dreams about these tunnels. Their nightmares make such convenient doors.”

Jon glanced around. “I’m not dreaming right this minute, am I?”

Helen arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t _we_ getting philosophical, now?”

“I have time,” Jon pointed out.

“And yet you choose to spend it traipsing about underground like every creature-of-the-night cliche imaginable. Let me guess: you finally let yourself have a bit of fun, perhaps tried out a few new delicacies…” Her fangs gleamed as her grin widened. “And you felt like you had to put in some extra brooding to balance it out.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

Helen fluttered her eyelashes. “Isn’t it?”

“It helps to come down here, sometimes, when everyone else has gone home.” Martin had returned to his flat after making Jon promise not to follow him, physically or psychically. “I can at least try to make sure that no threats are trying to sneak up on us.” He knew better than to look into a Spiral creature’s mind, but he couldn’t resist asking, “Should I count you among them?”

“If I wanted to harm any of your playthings, Archivist, I had plenty of chances to do so when the Flesh attacked them,” said Helen. “Are you fretting over whether _I’m_ a danger to them… or whether _you_ are?”

Jon almost laughed. “I’ve always known the answer to that question.”

“And you’ve almost always _cared._ ” Helen sounded disgusted. “Then again, even I have a hard time imagining you doing what Michael did: keeping your thralls chained in the dark, on the brink of starvation, losing all sense of reality…”

“Never!” Jon cut in. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”

Her eyes widened. “What kind do you want to be?”

“At the moment, I’ve gone back to wondering what will keep me from following Elias’s example,” Jon said grimly. Perhaps it was easier for people like Melanie to know where they stood with a predator who didn’t always try to do what was best for his prey. And yet, Jon couldn’t bring himself to regret trying. 

Helen smirked. “I think you know the answer to _that_ question, too.” She blew him a kiss. “Let’s catch up again soon, shall we?”

Then she was gone, and Jon knew that he could keep walking for the rest of the night, but sooner or later, his steps would lead him back up to the Archives, where his answers waited.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to alliedwolves for beta reading and story-jamming, and also to the creative minds behind the cinematic masterpiece _Labyrinth_ , which I have seen so many times that I didn't need to revisit a single scene or line of dialogue before referencing it in this fic.


End file.
